Rambling Mumbling 4

I cannot remember listening to the Emperor Concerto before I watched The Assassination of Richard Nixon. And even then I did not know it was Ludwig Van's; yet, it had a spell on me. Now, while creating lists of favorites from Bach, Mozart, and Ludwig Van; I chanced upon Emperor, I recognized it; I had a feeling of meeting a long-unseen, beloved friend and right away it took a special place in my mind, a place shared only by Bach's air.

Rambling Mumbling 3

On my iPhone, I have Merriam-Webster and Dictionary from Farlex Inc.; both are free apps. I like Merriam-Webster better, because the word-explanation is less cluttered. Rarely I fail to find a word in Merriam-Webster and I need to look it up in Dictionary. I wish I could touch the word on the book-page and see its principal meaning there without needing to pick up and unlock the phone and then search in an app. Yet I would never want to miss the ink-on-paper feeling, the feeling of turning a page with my fingers, the pleasant feeling of weight and girth, the smell on the page, its aging; those vary from book to book, and are still missing in the e-readers.

Rambling Mumbling 2

If you get attached to an opinion too much, you could get hurt. For example, I grouped the important scientific papers on usable authentication into several categories. Then I sorted them chronologically in each category. I thought I would read one category at a time and in chronological order, so that I could specialize on a particular concept (general to that category) while getting to know the temporal order of the developments in that category. But it seems that not all papers require the same level of concentration and quiet. You could become tired and less attentive and it is better to switch to easy papers in a different category for a while, may be until you are having sleep. After you have woken and your mind is fresh again, take up the difficult papers you skipped before.